Dependant Variables
by MyraValhallah
Summary: Standing on Bad Wolf Bay Rose Tyler makes a choice as a result she ends up living out her time on the TARDIS once again, only now she's the Last of the Time Lords and the Doctor as the companion. He remembers nothing of their shared past while She must balance two sets of memories. Can she steer their story towards a better ending or is their journey's course set in stone?
1. Prologue: Rose's Choice

_**Hi everybody,**_

**_I've been reading a few of Doctor/Rose role reversal stories and this idea came to me from... well I'm not entirely sure where. It's role reversal with a twist._**

**_Full summary: On Bad Wolf Bay, Rose Tyler made a choice; the result of which was that she ends up living her journey with the Doctor out all over again, only this time she is The Wolf, the Last of the Time Lords. The Doctor- now human- plays her role in their love story. He is oblivious to this shared history while the Wolf remembers both lifetimes she is forbidden to go out of her way to alter the course of their story._**

**_Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. Doctor Who belongs to the BBC and the name 'The Wolf' belongs to fairytaleslayer, which I use with kind permission._**

* * *

_**Prologue: Rose's Choice.**_

_(Pete's World: Norway, Local time 05/07/2012)_

The TARDIS materialized on the wet sand of Bad Wolf Bay, Jackie Tyler and the newly created copy of the Doctor led the way out of the ancient Gallifreyan vessel.

Jackie took one look at where they had landed and groaned in frustration. "Norway, _really?_ Fat lot of good this is, I'm going to have to call Pete, and he's doing the nursery run." She noticed the new Doctor's slightly quizzical look at this last point. "I was pregnant last time we were here, d'you remember? Well I had a baby boy."

"Oh brilliant," he grinned. "What's his name?"

"Doctor." said Jackie with an admirable poker face which the new Doctor apparently could not see through.

"Really?" he asked, sounding like a child allowed to open his presents the night before his birthday.

Jackie snorted. "No, you plum. We called him Tony."

By this time theactual Doctor, Rose and his newest companion, Donna, had emerged from the TARDIS.

"This is the parallel universe right?" she asked, with a slight edge of worry in her voice.

"You're back home." the older Doctor nodded.

"And the walls of the world are closing again," Donna put in. "Now that the reality bomb never happened the dimensions are reclosing." she grinned at the man beside her. "See, I really get this stuff now!"

"I can't go back now," Rose protested, weakly. "Not after all that time I spent trying to find you."

"You have to," the Doctor told her, gravely. "Because the cost of saving the universe this time was _him._" a brief gesture to the copy in a blue suit. "He's too dangerous to be left on his own. He committed genocide on the Daleks."

"_You_ made me." said the copy, defensively.

"Exactly," the first nodded, gravely. "You were born in battle…"

"So says the Killer of his Own Kind." a cool female voice put in.

All heads turned in the direction of the new comer. She was a tall woman of around forty with a head of wild light brown curls, restrained in a high ponytail. She was also dressed in a spacesuit.

"R-River?" Both the Doctor's stammered in perfect unison.

"Hello sweetie." the woman, River, smiled. "And sweetie."

"This is impossible," Donna stated, agape. "You're dead."

"Well yes." River nodded. "But I won't be here for long. I'm here with a proposition for Rose."

"M-me?" Rose stammered, she didn't know this woman, who was clearly someone of significance from the Doctor's future.

"You," River nodded, patiently. "You see, I'm not _really _River Song- I'm merely a projection of the good professor created by the TARDIS; but that's irrelevant really."

Rose blinked, and decided it might be easier to accept this situation rather than question it. "So this proposition…?"

River smiled. "Straight forward, I think you and I would have gotten on splendidly- once we got past the fact we're both in love with the same man."

"Wait what?" this from the Brown suited Doctor.

"Wake up," his copy rolled his eyes. "She knows our _name_. You know who she is."

"_Anyway,_" River said, loudly. "Rose, I want to offer you the chance to have the best of both worlds."

"You what?"

"I want to try something. If it is successful it will allow you to have forever with the man you love, _and_ allow you to retain contact with your human family."

"What?"

"Live out your journey with the Doctor again, only from the other side. You the Designated Driver, and _he _the wide eyed travelling companion."

"Rose no!" Both Doctors and Jackie cried.

Rose didn't seem to hear them. "Will we remember how things are meant to be?"

"_You_ will retain your memories." River nodded. "The Doctor however, will have to re_gain_ his."

"Rose, don't listen to her." Brown pleaded. "If you do this you'll lose yourself: you'll be a child of war, full of blood and anger and revenge. You'll be like I was when we first met- I love you too much to see that happen to you."

"I love you too," Rose told him. "You got better."

"Only because you made me better."

Rose placed her hand on his cheek, two pairs of brown eyes locking for what could be the last time. "And now you can do the same for me."

"But Rose, can't you see what he's giving you?" Donna asked plaintively, thoroughly on the original Doctor's side. "Tell her," this to the copy. "Go on."

"Rose, I don't just look like him, I think like him; have the same memories, thoughts, everything. Except I'm half human- I only have one heart."

Rose tore her gaze from the original Doctor's and looked at the copy askance.

"Which means that I won't regenerate. I only have one life, one that I could share with you."

"You'd grow old at the same time as me." It wasn't a question, nor was the thought of a human life with the Doctor unappealing. Rose let out a shuddering sigh. "River, if things don't turn out the way you hope, what then?"

"Then the time lines will revert, and things will progress as the Doctor would have them do. With none of you able to recall what transpired."

"With me looking after _him,_" Rose's gaze briefly found the metacrisis clone. "But what about the other one? What'll happen to him?"

"Spoilers." said River, with a meaningful look towards the Doctor by the TARDIS.

"Rose, I'll be alright." the original Doctor assured her. "I'm always alright. Same old life, last of the Time Lords, remember?"

"We both know that you _aren't _always alright though- you only say that when you're _not._" god she felt like crying. "And what if you weren't the last? She's offering me the chance to share that with you- and who knows…" one hand settled on her belly. "Maybe we could bring the Time Lords back?

"We weren't born that way." the Doctor told her. "Time Lords were essentially woven together from parent DNA."

"Then so be it," Rose retorted, stoutly. "Or are you saying that you don't want me?"

"Rose."

The way he said her name was enough to bring tears to her eyes. She'd never heard so much in the single syllable. The pain, the longing, the love. It was all the answer she needed.

"River," she said, voice little more than a whisper. "I want to try."

Somewhere in the multiverse a wolf howled.

Somewhere in the multiverse a storm raged.

And there on the wet sand of one universe's version of Bad Wolf Bay Rose Marion Tyler's world dissolved in a mess of golden light and a heartbreaking song.

~V~

* * *

_**And that is the Prologue.**_

_**I find River really hard to write. I hope I did her justice.**_

_**Please feel free to leave a review, I'd love to know what you think so far.**_


	2. Chapter One: The Wolf

_**Hi guys.**_

_**Here I present a very short chapter, simply to introduce the woman that Rose has become 'The Wolf'. All subsequent chapters will be longer.**_

_**Thank you to everyone who has read, favourited and or followed this story.**_

_**Special thanks also to: The Eclectic Bookworm and ThatBigBlueBox for their lovely reviews**_

* * *

_**Chapter One: The Wolf.**_

She was Rose Tyler, twenty six year old human being born on planet Earth in the late twentieth century.

She was The Wolf, nine hundred and some year old daughter of Gallifrey- Last of the Time Lords. Lone Survivor of the last great Time War which tore through the universe which she called home, leaving naught but destruction in its wake.

It was, The Wolf reflected, once she had gotten past the pounding headache which followed her latest regeneration a very strange thing to hold two sets of memories, both of which were equally real, and equally your own.

The wolf fully remembered growing up on the Powell Estate in London with a widowed mother, and meeting a wonderful, mad man who travelled through time and space in a blue box which was bigger on the inside. She also remembered centuries of travel in a stolen museum piece, often alone but sometimes taking on a passenger or two and showing them the wonders of the wider universe. She had been alone, except from the TARDIS, for some time now- drifting in the time vortex as the part of her which was simply Rose Marion Tyler came to terms with what she had agreed to.

Once upon a time Rose had scoffed when the man she loved spoke of his superior Time Lord mind, now though, she understood exactly what he meant. How on earth had poor Donna Noble managed to remain sane for even a moment taking a Gallifreyan mind into her human brain. The new Last of the Time Lords, the Wolf understood the periods of melancholy that the Doctor had suffered in both of the incarnations she had known first hand; even though he had tried to hide it beneath his boyish charm and energy in his tenth form. Rose Tyler alone could not comprehend the silence, the isolation, that was a Time Lord mind without the constant comforting background hum of other consciousnesses which came of being a member of a telepathic race.

It was a source of great comfort to the Wolf to dream of the days to come when the Doctor would return to her. When the TARDIS' experiment was a success and she and the Doctor would truly be equals and would be able to spend their lives together. The TARDIS even thought she might be able to find a way to break the curse of infertility that the children of Gallifrey had fallen under so many generations ago. The Wolf could live without bearing children- she remembered children from her life on Gallifrey before she stole the TARDIS, beloved but distanced from her when they returned from the Academy.

* * *

It was always a bit of a shock to see herself in the mirror; no longer the pink and yellow Rose Tyler she still thought herself as. Over the years the Wolf had had a selection of very different faces and personalities which were, coincidentally, a vaguely semblent to the way the doctor looked and acted in the eight lives he had lived prior to their acquaintance. The TARDIS refused to comment on whether or not she'd had a hand in this- the wolf rather suspected she had.

When she'd stolen the TARDIS from the museum on Gallifrey she had been old, prim and schoolmarmish, though there had been a ready sense of humour lurking beneath the prudish exterior. After that she had been a tiny whirlwind and careless of her outward appearance in layers of mismatched clothing.

Then she had been tall and slightly aloof in deep purple satin, black wrap and a string of seed pearls, proud despite her exile the knowledge stolen from her mind by the Council.

Her fourth self had been chubby and with a edge of the motherly maiden aunt. She had been rather fond of knitting patchwork garments, and offering boiled sweets left, right and centre.

The next body likely couldn't have been more different. A perky young strawberry blonde with a high ponytail habitually dressed for tennis on 1940s earth, though she later came to the conclusion that the radish earrings might have been a mistake.

Sixth she had been something of a contradiction in terms- she had taken to dressing in starkly contrasting colours but had been abrupt and no nonsense in everything that she did.

Following that she had been slightly mad with wiry dark hair under a straw boater.

And then she was quiet, thoughtful and had favoured sober dark velvet and auburn curls which she had kept pinned to the back of her head.

Now though, in the wake of the Time War the Wolf, like the Doctor when Rose Tyler had met him in the basement of Henrick's, was weathered, the very child of war that her beloved had warned her she would become if she agreed to the TARDIS' plan. She was quite surprised at what she had regenerated into this time; having almost expected a female version of the Doctor as she first met him (big nose and ears included). Instead her first foray into the cavernous wardrobe, finally sick of the now ill fitting blue crushed velvet gown favoured by her previous self, had revealed a small woman with dark blue eyes, set in a forgettable sort of face. She had fine black hair which fell to her shoulder blades. The Wolf hummed in careless acknowledgement of her new appearance before turning her back on the full length mirror, stepping out of the now too long dress and too large shoes leaving herself in just the shift that she'd worn beneath the itchy material, she sidled off to find something new to wear.

~V~

* * *

_**Next Time:**_ _**We meet the man that the Doctor has become and our story truly gets started.**_


End file.
